Why isn’t every word in a Wikipedia article ‘blue linked’. That is, how is something deemed as worth being linked to its own article?
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The authors and editors of pages decide what should be linked based on relevance. First, there has to be a Wikipedia article to link to. So if the Wikipedia page on a John Smith said “Mr Smith was taught by his mother, and later by Nelson Mandela”, there’s a Nelson Mandela page you can link to, but there might not be a page for Smiths mother unless she’s also famous, and there’s no reason to link to a more general page about what a mother is, because everybody already knows that. So the mention of Nelson Mandela would be a link, and the mention of Smith’s mother would not
Because no one has decided to edit it in. Or they did, and someone else decided it was too much and removed it. There’s not one unified policy. Or, well, there probably is a broad policy if you dig into the Wikipedia policy pages, but there’s no absolute rule for which things get linked and which don’t.
Remember, if you see an article that references something, and you feel like the something should be a wiki link, you can make that happen. I’ve done it plenty of times. Usually just the first time it’s mentioned is sufficient.
An article has to be about a “notable” subject, otherwise it can be deleted.
There are various criteria required to meet the notability requirements, and it depends on the subject. But primarily, it needs to have multiple independent reliable sources of information about the subject.
See “[Wikipedia:The answer to life, the universe, and everything](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_answer_to_life,_the_universe,_and_everything)”.
If an article doesn’t meet those standards, anyone can nominate it for deletion. If necessary, it goes to a public vote, to ultimately decide if it’s acceptable.
There’s lots of pages explaining it in more detail on Wikipedia, including “[Wikipedia:Notability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability)”, and “[Your first article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Your_first_article)”.
The Wikipedia Manual of Style contains a [section on overlinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking#Overlinking) that has: “a good question to ask yourself is whether reading the article you’re about to link to would help someone understand the article you are linking from.”
Apart from this, generally only the first occurrence of a term is linked in an article.
Because it’s an encyclopedia, not a language learning tool or a dictionary. Though for the latter there is [wikitionary.](https://www.wiktionary.org/)
A basic level of proficiency in the language is assumed, and only high level and specifically relevant concepts necessary for understanding the subject at hand are linked back to other articles.
Though, for a fun game that kind of exemplifies how this works out anyway, you can take literally any article, click on the first link that isn’t a disambiguation link or a pronunciation link, then do the same thing for the article you land on. Follow that process, and you will inevitably land on the article for Philosophy.
That’s not a built-in feature. That’s an emergent property of the system of a community built encyclopedia, and that’s just wonderful. If you’re really starting from scratch, it’ll take you right back to the basics of knowledge.
There are no rules, and ultimately the contributors each have different standards, though they do try to adhere to certain optional guidelines. Generally speaking a word will be blue linked if it’s deemed crucial to understanding the matter at hand and if there is an aricle available in the first place. But it would be too cluttered and distracting to just link everything so it’s done in moderation.
If you’re looking up a car for example all the related automotive terms like the drivertrain type or the technologies used in the car will be linked because they’re relevant, but you probably won’t find the country of origin linked as it’s not exactly relevant to the car and a much broader and unrelated subject.
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